18 Harold Harrung. [Juty, 
the vast fragments of ice that floated on all sides round the ship, both 
proved that.the power of the tempest had driven them farther to the 
north than any, perhaps, of their countrymen had ever ventured to pene- 
trate before. What was their horror and astonishment, when, after 
wasting the dubious twilight of those arctic nights in troubled slumber, 
they woke to find themselves encompassed on all sides by rough fields 
of ice, to which the swell from the south, yet unsubsided, was each 
minute adding in extent. Hour after hour, as it passed, only increased 
the dangers of their position ; yet the bolder still talked hopefully of 
escape, and their chieftain went from man to man to cheer, by exhorta- 
tion and example, their fast drooping spirits. But when a discoloured 
fog gathered round the ship, and the thick-falling snows reminded them 
too surely that autumn was advancing—when their ‘provision, though 
scantily doled out, began to fail—then dismay and despair fell on all but 
the firm soul of Harold Harrung.—“ Warriors and friends!” he ex- 
claimed, as they stood with stern and anxious looks around him, “ fear 
not for yourselves ; curse me not, that I disdained to purchase the favour 
of a loathsome witch! Can ye believe that the mighty Odin would per- 
mit his descendant, hitherto so favoured, to die the death of a dog ina 
wreath of snow? No, friends! if it had seemed fitting to the gods to 
bid me thus, in early youth, to the banquets of Valhalla—the battle- 
field, the deck running deep with foemen’s blood, would have been my 
appointed place of summons. The gods, who only can, will aid us yet.” 
They answered not ; for they loved their chief too well to curse him, 
even in such extremity of misery. Meanwhile, the snow gave place to 
a frost of the bitterest intensity; the last morsel of food was gone ; and, 
one by one, yet without a reproachful glance or word, Harold beheld 
his gallant’ followers expire around him, till he was left the only 
living thing in that dark and icy desert. It was, in truth, a dreadful 
doom to lingér thus alone among the dead—to gaze upon their glassy 
eyeballs and withered lips, that seemed to glare and smile in scorn !— 
many, too, still standing, as the frost had fixed them in their death-pangs, 
with the air and attitude of life !—and Harold, racked almost to madness 
by the horror of the scene, cast himself over the vessel’s side, and fled 
across those pathless wastes he knew not whither. The pangs of memory — 
returned not to the hero, till he found his headlong flight arrested sud-_ 
denly by arocky precipice that rose high into the clouds before him. In 
its front, not far above his head, there yawned a spacious cave; and, 
still seeking to escape from his own thoughts, he sprang up and entered. 
He passed a long and winding way in utter darkness ; but, at length, a faint 
light glimmered in the distance. The passage through which he moved — 
spread wider and higher as he approached, till it expanded into a vast 
illuminated hall. To a mind less torn with anguish than the hero’s, the 
spectacle of that cavern might have compensated years of toil. Far as 
the eye could reach, the soil was overspread with structures of magni- 
ficence and beauty. All that the inventive genius of man has, in ancient 
or modern times, devised—the massy pyramid—the graceful column—the 
arch, in each variety of form and ornament ;—all these were there carved 
out of solid ice, tinted with all the hues of the rainbow; and above 
floated a transparent cloud, athwart which the ever-changing forms of the 
aurora borealis played in perpetual flashes. But Harold wandered 
through this labyrinth of beauty, half-unconscious of the wonders that 
surrounded him. At length, the sound of gushing waters, so long 
